TV Review: Death In Paradise (BBC1, 9pm)

EVERY good TV cop needs a gimmick, and DI Richard Poole, the hero of Death in Paradise is no exception. His unique selling point is that he’s terminally ungrateful.

Okay, that may be a little harsh. But then how else would you describe a detective who’s disappointed to discover he’s been posted to a Caribbean island?

The idea for the series came to creator Robert Thorogood when he read about a suspected murder which took place in the Caribbean during a cricket world cup tournament. Because the victim had a British passport, a British policeman was sent to head up the inquiry.

“I imagined an uptight and by-the-book London copper trying to solve a murder in the sweltering heat of the tropics.

There was a series in this – I was sure of it,” says Thorogood.

It seems he wasn’t the only one who saw the potential. Ben Miller was also keen to win the part of DI Richard Poole.

“What attracted me to it is it feels sort of classic. It’s sort of Agatha Christie murder puzzles, but within a very up-to-date setting,” says the actor and comedian.

“It felt like it was a very new way of doing those kind of stories. The team are stuck on this island with no forensics, no ballistics and they have to solve crimes as people solved crimes a century ago, and there’s something wonderful about that.

“There’s something wonderful about that sort of Poirot, Agatha Christie-style investigation – cross-questioning all the witnesses and checking their stories, looking for means, motive and opportunity.”

And of course there’s the little matter of it being filmed in Guadeloupe. “There were so many moments that stand out, some of them bizarre, some of them sort of beautiful,” he says. “One day I drove in a car all the way to the top of a volcano, up through the rainforest, and it was just the most amazing thing looking out from the very top of the rainforest and seeing the whole island.”

Sadly, his character doesn’t share his enthusiasm when he’s summoned to Saint Marie to investigate the death of DI Charlie Hulme, found dead in a locked panic room during a party at a local mansion.

While some officers would be secretly tempted to toast the killer with a rum cocktail and then string the investigation out for as long as possible, Poole can’t wait to wrap the case up and go home.

But Hulme appears to have been loved and respected by his team, so who could have had it in for him? And even more puzzlingly, how could the crime have taken place in a locked steel room?

TALK of tropical islands bring us to Shipwrecked, back for a fresh series with ten young castaways marooned on a desert island without eight gramophone records to keep them company.

As the contestants arrive on a South Pacific island to compete for a fat cash prize, the fact they have no home comforts to contend with soon dawns on them. So they set about building shelters and search the local wildlife for food to augment their basic rations.

But as avid fans of the show could have probably predicted, it’s not long before the arguments break out when the islanders attempt to elect their first leader.

LOVE him or loathe him, Jamie Oliver certainly knows his onions. In fact, chances are he knows more about onions than anybody reading this preview.

After teaching us all how to eat more healthily, he sets out to prove in his new six-part series Jamie’s Great Britain that, contrary to international opinion, food created on our fair isle really is great.

He also delves into the history of some supposedly quintessentially-British dishes, and discovers many of their origins come from far-flung corners of the globe, having been introduced to the nation by invaders, colonists or immigrants.